Back to school

In one week’s time Rebecca and I will be sitting in a high-school classroom, participating in the Canadian Power and Sail Squadron’s Seamanship course (formerly known as Piloting). Here is a description of the course from their website:

“Seamanship uses traditional navigation, GPS fixes, Way Points, along with the introduction of Deviation, in the three homework cruises, and the examination take home cruises.

This course offers: interpretation of charts, the DR plot, bearings, fixes, running fixes, and Collision Regulations; and the exciting concept of plotting and labeling in True and Magnetic, adopted by the Training Department.

Seamanship, explains the skills needed to understand the hazards of weather, wind, waves, tides, and tidal currents and how to deal with them.

When unforeseen circumstances arise such as man-overboard, and medical emergencies the seamanship course counsels the student, as to where and how to acquire the skills to deal with potentially life-threatening situations, and of course you can “learn the ropes”, from knots, hitches, bends, and splices.

The course runs Wednesday evenings from Jan. 6 to Mar. 31.

I also signed myself up for a Marine Maintenance course, run by the same organization, which takes place on Tuesday evenings. Even though Rebecca would love to take that one too, one of us has to work to pay the bills, and she just happens to be the least dispensable of the two of us 🙂

Finally, at least for now, we are both investing some more time into studying for our Ham license. I have to say that I have never seen such a bunch of random stuff that simply needs to be memorized. I am at the point in the study manual when a list of frequencies need to be memorized. Often there is a pattern or trick to remembering things but if there’s an easy way to do this it escapes me!

Rebecca and I in the front row, studying for our Ham radio license.